NEWS IN BRIEF

DAKAR, Senegal — Sierra Leone will soon see a dramatic increase in desperately needed Ebola treatment beds, but it’s still not clear who will staff them, according to the top United Nations official in the fight against the disease

Ebola has sickened more than 16,000 people of whom nearly 7,000 have died, according to figures released by the World Health Organization Friday

Sierra Leone is now bearing the brunt of the 8-month-old outbreak In the other hard-hit countries, Liberia and Guinea, WHO says infection rates are stabilizing or declining, but in Sierra Leone, they’re soaring The country has been reporting around 400 to 500 new cases each week for several weeks Those cases are concentrated in the capital, Freetown, its surrounding areas and the northern Port Loko district, which together account for about 65 percent of the country’s new infections, Anthony Banbury, head of the U N Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, said in an interview with The Associated Press

“The critical gap right now in those locations are beds It’s as simple that: We need more beds,” said Banbury, who spoke by telephone from Ghana, where the mission is headquartered Only about 350 of some 1,200 promised treatment beds are up and running, according to WHO figures

Sierra Leone is also dogged by unsafe burials The bodies of Ebola victims are extremely contagious and the touching of dead bodies might be responsible for as much as 50 percent of all new cases, Banbury said

Cultural practices call for dead bodies to be washed, and women’s bodies are supposed to be prepared by other women But with very few women on burial teams, Banbury said that it appears people are washing the bodies of women before they call for them to be taken away

Sierra Leone also needs more burial teams: WHO numbers show that only about a quarter of the teams the country needs are trained and working

Woman drops cocaine baggie

UNIONTOWN, Pa — Authorities say a woman being cited for public drunkenness in Pennsylvania accidentally dropped a baggie of crack cocaine on the police station floor Uniontown police say 23-year-old Savannah Turachak, of Lemont Furnace, was patted down for weapons but not otherwise searched when she was brought to the station Nov 19 That’s because police were just citing and releasing her

But police say Turachak returned moments later to report being harassed by someone and, in the process, fluffed her shirt to straighten it out — and the drugs fell out

Surveillance video shows she tried to pick up the bag but instead left it when three other people walked in Police found it a short time later and charged her